Matthew 4:12-23

On Wednesday, Blanca, our custodian, and Carol, our church administrator, and I were tooling around the church. It was like the aftermath of a holiday party around here, with random cups on windowsills, glow sticks faded to pastel cast into nooks. For Christmas Eve services we had brought down every single chair in the church, including the velvet thrones from the sanctuary, so that everyone would be sure to have a place to sit, and still we were standing room only.

Jesus’s life has a lot of beginnings, like a novel by a first-time writer who needed a better copy editor. There’s the time when Jesus was the Word, in the beginning, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. That’s a lot of words, and not a lot of action.

The lectionary reading this morning the second and final Sunday of the Christmas season comes from the Gospel According to John, the first chapter, verses 1-18.

The lectionary reading this morning, the first Sunday after Christmas, comes from the Gospel according to Matthew, chapter 2, verses 13 – 23.

There is a lot of ink spilled and breath spent this time of year in religious circles on Mary’s Yes to God.

Did you know that Advent was meant to be a devotional time, a time for doing less and praying more, eating less and feeding more, spending less on ourselves and more on the poor? It is sometimes called a Little Lent. The readings for the first two Sundays in Advent are apocalyptic readings--they point us toward the second coming of the Messiah, the revolutionary who will totally re-order the world in just and equitable ways.

Note: Two files: